“The true power of the solution lies in its ability to continually improve workforce performance and profitability of the existing workforce.”

Finding Precision and Profit with Workforce Predictive Analytics

Xerox provides global Business Process Outsourcing, Information Technology, Managed Print Services and Document Management through a workforce of nearly 50,000 workers. The company turned to Cornerstone Selection to transform its approach to managing its workforce.

A pilot program reduced premature attrition among 2,000 customer service team members. Xerox's half year trial with Cornerstone Selection cut attrition by a fifth, and captured the attention of the company and the media. Reducing attrition this dramatically has a substantial impact on profitability. Training alone costs Xerox $5,000 per employee. Due to the success of the pilot, Xerox expanded the program across a population of 20,000 call center and other back office positions and has continued to see significant improvements in retention and performance.

By assessing applicants from Xerox and other large employers before they are hired and then tracking job performance, Cornerstone Selection uncovered characteristics and behaviors correlated with longer worker tenure and greater profitability. Xerox was provided with recommendations on how they can better select and develop their workforce to drive continuous and ongoing impact to profitability. Analyzing the data, the Cornerstone Selection product found that:

Characteristics Xerox historically thought of as desirable - such as living in close proximity to the job site and having access to reliable transportation - are indeed correlated with reduced attrition and better performance.

Participation in one or more social networks, but not more than four, are predictive of lower attrition. The data demonstrated that creative personalities tend to stick around for the six months needed to recover Xerox's investment in training. Inquisitive people often don't.

Before working with Cornerstone Selection, Xerox sought out applicants with previous call center experience. When we examined actual workforce performance and tenure, however, employees with previous relevant experience and others who brought no experience to the job performed almost exactly the same. This insight was important as it meant Xerox could consider a broader group of potential employees while reducing the higher payroll costs of experienced workers.

Cornerstone Selection supports Xerox not only with its selection tools, but also further downstream in the employee lifecycle. Cornerstone Selection is continuously mining Xerox data as well as other publicly available data to uncover improvement opportunities in how employees are selected and managed throughout their tenure. Unlike other offerings, the true power of the solution lies in its ability to continually improve workforce performance and profitability of the existing workforce, rather than simply helping recruit replacements for departing workers.